Profiling the Infrastructure Privatization Lobby: The Global Infrastructure Investment Association (GIIA)
September 22, 2025
Prepared by: Lauren O’Reilly, Financialization Research Lab
The Global Infrastructure Investors Association (GIIA) is an advocacy group that aims to promote private investment in infrastructure around the globe. Its membership consists of some of the biggest names in private equity such as Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, and J.P. Morgan, who collectively, alongside the association’s 100+ affiliate members, represent US $2.04 trillion of infrastructure assets in 68 countries.
GIIA’s membership list also includes corporate names with a high profile in Canada, including Brookfield, CPP Investment Board (CPPIB), Caisse de Depôt, and, as of recently, Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP).
Established in 2015, the GIIA’s founding members included massive asset management funds from Australia, the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Canada, including but not limited to sovereign wealth funds, life and health insurance asset managers, pension funds, and private equity funds. Just prior to the group’s official establishment, prominent industry magazine Private Equity International mentioned the GIIA as one of just two groups in the infrastructure industry that have begun responding to the immense social scrutiny and increasingly negative public perceptions of private infrastructure ownership (Private Equity International 2015). Such scrutiny extends to the global financial sector generally, occasionally resulting in tighter regulation of banks, private equity, and infrastructure operators—outcomes which the GIIA explicitly lobbies against.
In June 2016, the GIIA held their first meeting in Toronto. Having grown to 40 members by this time, 8 of these founders of GIIA were Canadian pension funds. When asked to explain the association’s decision to convene their first meeting in Toronto, former GIIA CEO Andy Rose commented:
“When it comes to infrastructure, Canada is where the money lives.”
Canada is the jurisdictional home and headquarters for many of the world’s largest and most asset-rich pension funds—and their investments are by and large “global”. Out of the CPP’s $714 billion portfolio, only 12% is currently invested in Canada (Benefits and Pensions Monitor 2025). In a Globe and Mail article published in 2016 covering the GIIA’s meeting in Toronto, then-CEO Andy Rose expressed high praise for Canadians on their global leadership in infrastructure investing. Rose commended the level of infrastructure financing investment expertise of major Canadian funds, using the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan (OTPP) as his example, citing their $16 billion infrastructure portfolio wherein “the majority of assets are held outside of Canada, principally in the U.K., Europe, Chile, the U.S. and Australia”—including control of the water utilities in Chile (Globe and Mail 2016; Business News Americas 2024).
In a recent interview, the current GIIA CEO, Jon Phillips, described the recent activities of the GIIA, who claimed that the association is
“…engaging directly with decisionmakers and advisers, to ensure policies are in place that enable our membership to continue investing through a challenging period”
These efforts include lobbying for more public private partnerships (PPPs) and better regulatory frameworks for private capital (Global Infrastructure Hub 2023). Phillips also mentioned that while initially, the GIIA focused primarily on the UK, Brussels, and Washington DC, they are gradually extending their reach into Australian and Canadian markets.
In the same interview, Phillips was asked about what he hopes to see from governments in the immediate, medium, and long-term as the GIIA continues its pursuit of “influencing governments to work with funds to develop policy frameworks that attract and drive infrastructure investment”. Phillips’ reply placed significant emphasis on the importance of “net zero and long-term resilience to climate change”, as well as the need to “future-proof” energy, utility, and transport networks. Further, he argued that closing the funding gap through PPPs with investment from GIIA members was critical to doing so. The GIIA boasts of its members’ key role in developing the infrastructure required for things like a net zero economy on their website, assuring that they “promote an environment where private investment is encouraged and able to contribute positively to economic, social and environmental goals” (GIIA).
Against this backdrop, it is important to mention that one of the most prominent Canadian members of the GIIA is Brookfield Corporation, formerly chaired by now Prime Minister Mark Carney. While having several investments in renewable energy and making explicit climate commitments, Brookfield also has notable and controversial investments in high profile fossil fuel and oil and gas companies (Global Energy Monitor 2023). Between 2020 and 2024, Brookfield was accused of “breaching Indigenous rights or harming the environment in at least four countries”, with multiple Brookfield businesses facing “reports of serious human rights abuses in Brazil, Indigenous resistance in Columbia, a First Nation’s $100-million lawsuit in Ontario and an environmental dispute in Maine” (CBC 2025). In September, 2025, the Center for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (CICTAR) released a detailed report on Brookfield’s role in the water sector in Brazil that showed how its Brazil subsdiariy, BRK Ambiental, was using controversial tax incentives from the Brazilian government to finance its continuing privatization of the country’s public water utilities (CICTAR 2025).
Available material describing the origins of the GIIA suggests that the large Canadian pension funds, most of which are Toronto based, were instrumental as founding sponsors. It is notable that such funds, which in previous decades operated as low-profile and passive actors in the financial markets, have decided to engage so actively in lobbying and advocacy activities within an increasingly controversial field of public policy. A wide range of social movement actors – trade unions, public healthcare advocates, environmental groups – are aligned on the other side of these policy debates.
References:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/brookfield-carney-indigenous-rights-1.7498967
https://giia.net/about/our-members
https://www.bnamericas.com/en/news/canadian-pension-funds-still-confident-in-chile-investments